random fiction

[Amos]

In the past I’ve occasionally put little things in my reflections thread, but I’m feeling the need for a more communal fiction. So, okies, this thread is intended for all those small works of fiction, random bits of writing and scribbled prose that are too tiny to need their own thread, or simply don’t belong anywhere else. Or whatever. Basically, if you want to share something you’ve written, post it here. No holds barred on what it is, how it’s written, or how long or short it is. So long as it’s yours and at least partly untrue. ;) :)

A few notes.

1. As I said, no holds barred. Be as dark or light as you wish. If you’re gonna be sick though, or disturbingly cheerful, it might be better to put it elsewhere on the web and link to it, with a small warning. But I don’t think that will be much of an issue, most people here, possibly excluding myself, aren’t all that.. um. Yes. :umm:
2. The things you write must be your own work. No posting work by other people, especially if it’s copyrighted. I guess this goes without saying anyway, but still.. :rolleyes:
3. Nothing you write here will remain your own work, so don’t be protective about it. But if you’re going to use other peoples’ writings outside of the thread then be a gentleman/woman and ask them. If you want to use it in the thread then go nuts. Be inspired. Adapt other people’s fiction if you want to, and use it in new creative ways.
4. You don't have to explain yourself. Post randomly and as often or as little as you like. Freeform is the name of the game here.

And that’s about it. :)

[Amos]

In the corner of Gepetto’s workshop he stood, rocking back and forth. He dreamed of running through open fields, ripe, juicy apples and sleeping under the starry skies. He dreamed there was hot blood pumping through his veins, warm, salty tears in his eyes, and joy in his beating heart. But Gepetto was having none of it. Gepetto was cold, and cared for only one person.

So he sat in alone in the workshop, slowly rocking back and forth, dreaming of a day when he would be a real horse.

**

“But you don’t understand, father,” whined Pinocchio, “I don’t want to be a real boy.”

“What do you want then?” asked Gepetto.

“I want to be a real girl!”

With a sigh, Gepetto put down the book of spells, and went to fetch his chisel.

**

Gingerly, wincing as he did, Gepetto applied the balm to his sores. “One day,” the old man leered to himself, with sleazy yet satisfied eyes, “one day I’ll have a real boy.”

**

The discovery that his wife was barren had hit Gepetto hard. He rarely left the house these days, and spent most of his time in the workshop fashioning wooden children. His wife was very worried about him.

Then one day, many years later, he came out of the workshop with a young boy in tow. He offered no explanation, but in contrast to her husbands joy, Mrs. Gepetto was devastated. It was clear to her that he’d been having an affair. All those years she thought he’d been in the workshop.. She left him the next day.

Word began to spread around town, of how the boy had seemingly come out of nowhere, almost magically out of Gepetto’s workshop. A few accused him of sorcery, and soon the whole town was up in arms. Meetings were held. Words were spoken.

Three weeks after his wife left, Gepetto woke one morning to find a mob at the door. They had his son tied to a pile of wood, and they accosted him too and bound the two together. Then they set them alight. It was good, the townspeople agreed, that they had burned the witch and his devil child before they could do any harm.

Just as the flames were flickering out, a woman came running. She had been in the fields, picking rice, and hadn’t heard the news of what they were planning until too late. They had burned them, she cried in anguish, her lover and her beautiful son. The townsfolk were duly shocked. It was a terrible thing they had done. They would surely go to hell for it, and spend the rest of their lives in persecution… but only if word got out. And there was no one to spread word but Gepetto’s mistress…

So, for the second time that day, dark clouds of smoke filled the air of Woodville.

**

Life was hard for Pinocchio. He wasn’t like the other boys at school They teased him, carved horrible things into him with their knives, set him alight, and generally made his life miserable. It wasn’t fair. One night, he wished upon a star. He wished he was a real boy. Nothing happened. He tried for several nights, but still his wish went un-granted. Things were getting no better for him at school, so he changed tack. The next night he wished upon a black star. He sat naked under the open sky beneath a full moon. He used gasoline to burn a pentagram into the grass. He killed a goat and drank it’s hot blood, and called on dark gods and sentient devils to grant him power. But nothing happened. Pinocchio grew desperate. Then he had an epiphany. He stopped wishing. He stopped asking. He woke up the next morning, and got himself a gun.

**

The Soprano family were devastated. How could this happen to their little boy? All the wise men in the village said it must have been a spell, a spell cast by a witch. A witch had turned their beautiful boy Pinocchio into a wooden husk. Desperate, they turned to the wizard Gepetto. He spent three days working magicks, trying to cure the boy, and eventually, exhausted from the effort, he succeeded.

But it wasn’t a perfect cure. Pinocchio seemed different now. He acted strangely, spending much of his spare time in the woods. He slept on the oaken floors of the kitchen, and their were rumours, sick rumours, that he had developed a fetish for wooden, hand-carved dolls. In the end the Sopranos decided they couldn’t go on like this. They didn’t want a freak for a son. They turned once again to the wizard Gepetto, who did what he could to make the boy as normal as possible.

The family put the wooden statue in the living room. He made a fine conversation piece.

**

In the corner of Gepetto’s workshop he stood, rocking back and forth. He dreamed of running through open fields, ripe, juicy apples and sleeping under the starry skies. He dreamed there was hot blood pumping through his veins, warm, salty tears in his eyes, and joy in his beating heart. But Gepetto was having none of it. Gepetto was cold, and cared for only one person.

So he sat in alone in the workshop, slowly rocking back and forth, dreaming of a day when he would be a real chair.

[Anita Blake]

I was twelve when I first met her. Twelve and skinny, pale, and bookish. Twelve and already my destiny laid out before me: dull.

My parents, they tried, but they didn't understand me much. I always felt that I was rather a disappointment to my father, who would perhaps have understood my lack of interest in football if I had perhaps been interested in bottle rockets and making trouble. But the truth was, I didn't want trouble. I wanted peace, quiet, solitude. Time to explore the reaches of our new acreage.

It was in the forest behind our land that I met her.

I was twelve, and she was perhaps a bit older than me. Only twelve, and yet from the moment I saw her, I knew that I would never love another.

She had raven-dark hair, sapphire eyes, and a quick smile. She didn't care that I liked to come to the forest to read. She didn't laugh at me like the girls in school, and she didn't talk endlessly about clothes and otehr girls, and boys. She simply was there, encouraging, kind, filled with a special laughter that was for me alone.

Always I met her in the forest. She wasn't always there, but the times she was, those are the most golden and precious memories of my life.

It was weeks before I realized she always wore the same clothes, months before I began to recognize the fearful look in her eyes when I asked about her family, and why she didn't go to school.

Because, these things weren't supposed to happen. You meet someone, and you talk to them, and you maybe even fall in love with them. If you're lucky, you get married and grow old together and raise your own children far better than you yourselves were raised. This is the way of the world. This is the way it was.

So, I can't honestly say that I ever figured her secret out for myself. Perhaps, given time, I would have.

When she first told me she was dead, I thought she was joking. But when she proved it, I wanted nothing more than to die to be with her. I couldn't, you see, imagine life without her. I wanted to kiss her, feel her eternally budding breasts, above all I wanted to posess her, hold her and keep her forever, but the joke was on me, because the girl I loved had died before I was even born.

My parents, they believed that maybe I loved botany, because of the long hours I would spend in the forest. I don't know that I ever saw a tree.

I spent my youth chasing a ghost. In love with a ghost.

But I never had the courage to do what she told me not to. I obeyed her command, and I lived. I lived, and grew older, and taller, and broader, and an obsession that could never bear fruit began to seem tiresome to me, while living, fleshy girls seemed more and more interesting. I went to the forest less and less.

When I did go, her sorrow made me angry. Here I was, going on seventeen, and my dead, fourteen year old girlfriend was sad.

I kissed a real girl.

I told the dead girl about it, and she cried. It made me feel somehow better to make her hurt the way I hurt. I couldn't have her, the girl i loved, so it was only fair to let her know she couldn't have me.

I stopped going to the forest altogether after that.

I fucked a cheerleader. Her hair was naturally blonde and blood ran through her warm veins. When I went outside, I didn't even look towards the forest.

I went off to college not long after and found that living girls in college liked bookish men. Until sapphire eyes stopped crying ghostly tears, I screwed all the blue-eyed girls I could entice into my dorm-room bed.

College ended. I met a nice, bookish woman with blonde hair, brown eyes, and a stern mouth, and married her. She had never left the city, never been in a forest, and didn't hold well with "those new age flakes who believe in clairvoyants". My mother despised her. We didn't visit.

I, meanwhile, had developed an intense phobia of death.

We had a son who liked trucks and baseball and football and airplanes. A daughter who dressed her dolls like tramps and wanted to wear makeup far too young.

And then one day, my father up and died. I had to return home for the funeral.

The forest behind the house had been thinned to the point of being little more than a few trees between new houses. My old bedroom had been converted to a storage room for my mother's craft projects. I had never really forgotten my childhood infatuation, but had long since chalked it up to an overactive imagination.

After the funeral, my mother suggested I go for a walk in the forest.

What forest? I thought, looking at the dismally thin patch of trees. But I went, balding in my mid-thirties, married with children, erectile dysfunction beginning to set in (likely due to my wife's callous remarks about my performance in the bedroom, which was in turn affected by her utter lack of interest in anything to do with my life). I went to the forest thinking that maybe I could find some of that peace that I had had as a young boy. Maybe the fresh country air would do me good.

And was confronted by sapphire eyes. She, of course, was still fourteen, still fresh and young and beautiful, wearing the only clothes I had ever seen her in, a child, barely older than my daughter.

"I would have died for you," I said, not knowing what else to say. Meeting an old ex-girlfriend had never been this awkward.

Her smile wasn't quick the way I remembered. It was wary. "You didn't need to," she replied, pointing over her shoulder.

And there, a young boy, pale, bookish, and utterly disappointing to his parents, sat reading under an old oak tree, the sunlight dappled through the leaves onto his content face. For a second, our eyes, met, and I saw that indeed, I hadn't needed to die to leave a part of me with her.

But I almost wished I had.

[QuirkyTemplate]

There was a kid named Bov who had dreams of being an excellent sailor when he was older. Well, he did all that crap, and then he died. He did have a son before he died, and that son's name was Charlie. A shame that Charlie never had a father figure in his life, it really screwed him up. Having a harlot for a mother probably didn't aid things any either. Nonetheless, Charlie was in fact living at that time and so he decided one day -- in between hours spent stabbing and looting -- that he'd like to go on a long journey. The small sea town wasn't large enough for the likes of Charlie. He'd heard stories and myths of cities and peoples long lost and yet to be discovered. These usually bored him (and resulted in stabbing) unless they ended in either A) Gratuitous sex or B) Gratuitous violence or C) Unwarranted injustice. So when a story came up that had A), B), and C), well, he was all ears. This type of story came up rather frequently, as one might imagine, in the port town of Brusenberge.

Point being, he left on this journey. He eventually came back with a little less money than he started with and died when he was about forty years old. That's pretty old if you're a port town ruffian. But before he died he had this daughter. Well, he didn't have the daughter -- truth be told he didn't even know about the daughter -- but there existed, regardless, a daughter born of his seed.

She had no father figure either, and ended up as promiscuous as her grandmother was, which would have been pretty uncomfortable for her to think about, had she known about it. Her life was pretty uneventful. Eventually after a bunch of years, she also died. But not before giving birth to some fifteen kids. Each one had no-father-figure issues, which generally sucked. However, about seven of them shaped up into fine lads and/or lasses that went to college and graduated with an average class rank. One as a doctor, everyone else majored in some liberal arts degree that didn't really help them later in life. Frank thought his might have helped him land that bank-telling job, but it actually didn't.

Turns out that this doctor was named Termy, which was short for Termitew. Most of his friends just called him Dr. T. He was the most renowned foot surgeon on the east coast. Years later people would write wonderful stories about him and his exploits in ground breaking foot surgery research. Unfortunately he got sued for malpractice and lost his job. Later he was hired on under a different clinic and retired at about fifty. He died at about ninety, just to keep the numbers even.

Oh, right, the plot. Yeah, turns out that Bov killed this one guy who's son's son's son eventually sued Dr. T for malpractice. It was almost ironic ... but not really.

[Alexia]

PART 1
There was this boy I knew. They say he had an addiction. A strong one. One that would most others would've paid for with their life - it got that kind of hold on a person. But her stayed around. Unlike all others, he hung on and got a level of control on things. You see, this addiction he had... well, it wasn't an addiction of a thing or a stuff... it was an addiction of a girl. This girl though, she wasn't his type. Not his type at all. Or rather the reason that she wasn't made her that she was. She wasn't the kinda girl a guy could hang on to for long - she could breeze into his life as swiftly or slowly as she liked, but she could just as easily breeze out of it - and he knew that and loved her still.

But the real confusing thing about this boy and his girl was their age difference. In the past he'd usually been called a cradle-snatcher or lucky. This time he was called proper. There was less than a year's age difference between them and that was the catch because this boy had never been one for comformity or regularity.

And that's how things ended. Where the girl had picked things up in the beginning, he was the one who let them slip away in the end. For 18 years, this boy had been an individual... a trend-setter... a one-of-a-kind... so when his image was threatened, well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, right? And so it ended.

Just

like

that

.


PART 2
So this girl. This addiction. She learned to move on. She believed in time healing all wounds and trusted that the pain of loving and losing was bound to fade after a while.

But seasons gradually passed and the girl couldn't forget, despite how fervently she tried. She shared her bed with other men. She burned all the letters and gave away all the possessions. She stopped singing at her work and she began to fear the night and the loneliness it brought. She feared open spaces where couples could mingle but where she could only stand, shunned, on the outer rim of their private worlds. Looking in. Looking back. She despised what her life had become.

The runs in her stockings and the stains of mascara on her cheeks labelled her boldly as a broken girl. Her heart became cold and bitter and time had failed to heal her wounds. The life she had once had, the life she had taken for granted, was truly gone.

Just

like

that

.

PART 3
But one day they found eachother again. Or rather, he found her. She was destined for France where she hoped to build a new life and leave all of the old one behind. It was her last resort. Her bags were packed, her apartment cleared. All her possessions had been sold and she was left with a small quantity of clothing, a broken heart and a broken life.

But then he appeared. At her door. His hand poised to knock just as she swung it open to leave. She looked at him and saw how he'd changed... how he'd roughened and faded all at once. She wondered why he'd come.

He looked at her and only wondered how he'd ever let her go.

And so they fell back in love even though they'd never fallen out. They simply began all over again.

Just

like

that

.

[Amos]

Come day's end, the sheep herded the man into the yard. Using their woolly backsides they closed the gate behind him. They left. Once they were out of sight the man climbed the fence and walked home, where his wife had a hot dinner of roast lamb waiting for him.

[Anita Blake]

He just stood there, smiling. And it wasn't by any conscious effort that everything became a part of him, it was just part of what he was.

A universe lived inside him, you see. And being that he was but a small, inquisitive mortal, this universe had to swim, constantly shifting, always needing more to sustain itself. His curiosity led him to seek out new information, which he would absorb at an alarming rate. The universe within his mind grew, and grew, and at some point, the universe came to the realization that it would need to do some serious rearrangement if it was all to fit. So it formed two tiny, miniscule black holes, which were left to be mostly in charge of gathering new information. Black holes being what they are, they grew, and he began to suck in everything he saw, everything he experienced.

And so it was that when she met his eyes, he sucked the essence from her without trying, without meaning to. It was simply his nature. He wasn't even aware that she was gone, because she was still in him, somewhere in the black holes of his eyes, somewhere in the cosmos that was his soul.

[Anita Blake]

A Likely Story


“So you fell in love, don’t see the big mistake of that,” the middle-aged drunk next to me cut in to what had so far been a mostly one-sided conversation. I smiled patiently.

“I didn’t just fall in love though,” I said. “No, that would have been far too simple. I fell in love with a powerful man.” The drunk’s eyebrows raised, and I could see the judgements coming down on me. Queer. Faggot. Pervert. Yes, and now he was wondering when I was going to ask him to the back room for some funfun times. I wanted to explain that, no, it wasn’t like that. Does falling in love with once with a man make a man gay? It occurred to me at this late point that perhaps I was telling my story to the wrong person, but in all the dark bars I’d been to tonight, he was the only one who was listening, even if he didn’t understand a word of it.

“A powerful man that was not a man,” (and again, the drunks eyes change, and I can see my ranking shifting down from queer pervert to genuine A-list weirdo) “ He was Death. I saw him that day, and I was – words can’t adequately describe the way he made me feel. Small. Insignificant. Everything about him, in comparison to me, was intensely superior. Perhaps love is the wrong word for what I felt, obsessive awe might be closer to it.

“He looked at me, and I knew that he hadn’t come to take me. No, he was just en route from house to house. Spectacular. And then he was gone. But I was marked.”

The drunk by now had ordered another round of beer. I accepted mind gratefully and pondered over it’s foamy head for a moment before continuing my tale. The drunk was listening with the look of a man who can’t wait to tell his friends and/or wife about the nut-job he met at the pub. I didn’t mind. Such judgements used to bother me, but that was before. This is now.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And then he was there, everywhere I went, I’d catch a glimpse of him. I began to try to think of clever things to say to him. What do you say to Death? Eventually, I settled on ‘Hi’, and the next time I saw him, I froze. Couldn’t say it. But the time after that, I was resolved.

“ ‘Hi,’ I said, my voice was shaking and I probably sounded like a scared little girl. He said something back to me, but I didn’t at the time know what it was. Funny thing about Death: he doesn’t speak English. He speaks the Language of the Dead. No one living can hear it, and none dead can speak it. It’s a curious little language that I suspect he made up himself. He’s fairly dramatic that way. But he said something to me, and then he smiled, and walked away.

“I was elated. I felt the way I did when I was in high school and I won first place in the eight hundred meter run, and lost my virginity on the same day. Seriously, that actually happened to me,” I added in response to a sharply upturned brow. “Vera Saunders. Oh what a pair she had.” I lost myself in that particular memory for a moment. We had been going steady, Vera and I, for a couple months, and she was beside herself with joy that I had done so well in the race. Her dad was out of town, so we went to her house and stripped naked and boned away in her sweet girl’s bedroom. She was anything but a sweet girl. Ahh, simpler times.

“The next night, he returned. He had flowers. He spoke some more Language of the Dead to me, but I didn’t understand it at all yet. But I gathered that he loved me as well. It was a curious love affair. We liked to watch each other go about our daily lives (or in his case, un-life). But finally the day came for our great love to be consummated. I had mixed feelings. The language barrier was difficult to overcome, but I was given to the understanding that he wanted me to marry him.

“Now, the affair, as it were, was great, but I wasn’t sure of making an eternal commitment to Death. Part of it just seemed so … wrong. But the other part of it seemed to right and beautiful that against my better judgement, I allowed myself to be seduced by it.

“I was taken to the Underworld with Death. It’s not really the way it’s described in legends and books, I’ll tell you that much. It was kind of beautiful. And then I could understand his strange language and he told me that I was to become a member of his harem. At this point, it was too late to turn back, even if I had wanted to, and I didn’t. Something about it seemed right.

“The harem was filled with men and women of all ages and shapes and colours. We all loved Death, and Death loved us. When he’d get too tired to do his work, we’d do it for him.”

The drunk next to me pondered this, momentarily drunk enough to have forgotten to be cynical.

“But what I don’t get is, before, you said it was a big mistake. Well, I don’t see the mistake here. Seems like everyone got what they wanted.” His eyes shifted in and out of focus.

“Oh, that. Well, you see,” I smiled most charmingly, “the mistake is yours, for listening to me. I’m on duty, you see.”

The drunk’s face grew serious. He was about to make a last request, I could tell, but that’s when his poor heart gave out, and he slumped onto the bar unceremoniously.

I patted his dead, slumped shoulders and got up to leave. The bartender shouted after me “Hey, your friend ok?” I shrugged.

“Never met him before in my life. Just passed out, I guess.”

I walked out of the bar and hailed a cab. The night was young, and I had a lover to please.

[Anita Blake]

"untitled"

“How do you know these things about me?” he asked in wonder to the girl before him. She smiled, a shy, quiet smile, her eyes slightly downcast as she mused upon her answer.

“Well,” she began, “it has to do with how I was born. You see, at the moment of my birth, while I was on the cusp of this world and the nether regions beyond, a trumpet blare sounded from the Heavens. It had nothing to do with me, understand, it wasn’t to herald my birth or anything so grand as that. The trumpets in Heaven blare quite frequently, to tell the truth. But I heard it, one half of me in this world, the other not so much.

“I heard it as I crossed into this world, and it opened my senses to the things which are beyond immediate understanding. And so it is that I can see straight into your soul, and find you interesting and good.”

She nearly glowed with an inner radiance, he thought, she was so beautiful and unearthly he could almost believe this simple tale.

“That’s the weirdest pick-up line I’ve ever heard,” he said, laughing. She laughed too, because it was funny, but she never glowed quite the same way after that. He never told her that he loved her story, never told her it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, but it was true. He simply wasn’t sure how to frame the words, so he did it with a kiss, and when he breathed in her breath, he could swear he tasted sunlight from Heaven.

[Amos]

“How do you know these things about me?” he asked the girl before him. She smiled, a sly, quiet smile, her eyes lidded and sultry as she mused upon her answer.

“Well,” she began, “it has to do with how I was born. You see, at the moment of my birth, while I was on the cusp of this world and the nether regions beyond, a tolling bell sounded from the crimson circles of Hell. It had nothing to do with me, understand, it wasn’t to herald my birth or anything so damning as that. The bells in Hell toll frequently, to know the truth of it. But I heard it, one half of me in this world, the other not so much.

“I heard it as I crossed into this world, and it opened my senses to the things which are beyond immediate understanding. And so it is that I can see straight to your true nature, and find you sinful and wicked.”

She nearly glowed with an inner radiance, he thought, she was so desperate and unearthly.

“That’s the best pick-up line I’ve ever heard,” he said, laughing darkly. She laughed too, but she never glowed quite the same way after that. He never told her that he believed her story, never told her it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, but it was true. He simply wasn’t sure how to frame the words, so he did it with a kiss, and when he breathed in her breath, sucking out her soul as he did, he could swear he tasted the sweet fires of Hell once more.

[Amos]

the well

when sara-marie dreamed, it was almost always about her well. it was built of stone, and had a polished wooden bucket that could be lowered into the well via a golden rope and a crank handle. she knew it belonged to her because the stones were the same colour as her eyes, blue-grey, and after drinking from the well she was able to fly. the well sat in the middle of a clearing in a dark wood. there were no paths leading in or out of the wood, when she dreamed she was just there in the first place, but after a drink she could soar above the gnarled, twisted, leafless branches of the old trees, to the bright places lay beyond. places of happiness and adventures.
the well was quite deep. she had no way of measuring it of course, but it felt deep, in the same way that a secret feels heavy. there was a lot of water in it, but lately it seemed to sara-marie that the level had been dropping a little quicker than usual. the last time that had happened was when her parents had split up. like she had then, sara-marie suspected now that somebody else had been drinking from her well. night after night she watched it draining. some nights it barely did at all, an inch or so, and she guessed that those nights the intruder had been unable to make it into her dream-world, and the only water that had gone had been that which she had drank. but most nights saw the water level drop nearly a foot. and every night the intruder seemed to be drinking more and more.
it was getting harder for her to fly, as well. where she had once flown effortlessly over the treetops, zipping about like a dragonfly, she now lumbered like an overweight duck, and had a number of times almost caught herself on the higher branches. she knew if she fell into the wood she would never find her way out again. nobody had told her this, she just knew, in the same way that she knew without looking when someone was watching her from her bedroom doorway. she thought that the intruder must somehow be tainting the water in her well, so that it wasn't working properly.
she made up her mind that she must catch the intruder and stop him before he either drank all the water, or it became so tainted that she couldn't fly with it anymore. or that worse, it would poison her. she went to bed early, complaining to her mother and step-father of a tummy ache. when she closed her eyes she fell asleep immediately, in the way that only children and the utterly exhausted can. she opened her dream-eyes and she was in the clearing, standing beside her well. there was no one about yet, so she walked to the edge of the wood where a clump of boulders stuck out from the earth, and she hid behind one, peeping over the top. she didn't have to wait long.
when the intruder came, he appeared as she had, right beside the well. he wore a long black coat, and a low-brimmed hat, but seemed to be barefoot. she couldn't see who the intruder was, because he was facing the other way, couldn't even be sure it was a he, but it was very tall and bulky so it probably was. right away he lowered the bucket into it's depths, pulled it up brimming with water, and greedily drank. sara-marie began to sneak up on him, but to her surprise he suddenly took off from the ground, flying as she had so many times. she watched him for a bit. his flight was even more ungainly than her own trips had been lately. he seemed heavy in the air, like a floating stone, and barely missed the treetops at all.
sara-marie rushed to her well, dipped the bucket and took a hurried drink. she wanted to catch him before he got across the wood, to find out who he was. something in the way he moved made him seem familiar. she spread her arms and flew up, quickly at first, but slowing as she gained height. she was faster than the intruder. right before she caught up with him, he happened to turn and see her. she recognised him then, and he her, but while she was surprised, he was scared. his face was blank, but she could see his fear in his eyes, in the same way she could see the guilt of her puppy when it had been naughty.
he was so scared that he dropped a little, just low enough to snag on a branch and crash noisily into the dark shadows of the wood. sara-marie didn't go after him. she wasn't sure if she could help him out, and anyway he deserved it for drinking from her well. she woke up in the morning feeling happy that she'd put a stop to it. the next few nights, sleeping in the motel bed with her mummy, the water in her dream-world well dropped quicker than ever. she noted that while the water wasn't getting any worse, it was still tainted. it tasted foul and she continued to struggle to fly like she used to.
sometimes she heard the intruder's screams coming from the trees. he was dead; she knew this as surely as if she'd pushed him into her well and watched him drown, and the screams were really echoes, bouncing around in the dark, inescapable wood. but they made sara-marie shiver all the same, and over time she went to her dream-well less and less, willing herself against it before she went to sleep, until it, the clearing, the wood, and the intruder, were all distant memories, buried under time. preserved, maybe, but for better or for worse, forgotten.

[Amos]

my sister thought we should sell our inheritance, but the broach was a family heirloom. we compromised and together took it to the antiques roadshow. the appraiser looked it over carefully. he asked us where we had acquired it, then told us it was worthless. he offered us ten pounds for it, saying broaches were a penchant of his, and my sister accepted before i could object.

the episode was never actually aired, and much ado was made about the abrupt end to the roadshow, especially the disappearance of all the appraisers. subsequent searches failed to find any of the ladies and gentleman who had made their livings valuing the hidden treasures of britain's common folk. government inquests into the show's affairs were hindered by the interference of several wealthy, noble families.

the appraisers weren't seen again until seven years later. they turned up at my house, of all places. their tweed jackets and modest dresses were crinkled, and their hair long and wild. the man we had sold the broach to did all the talking. he wore the amulet on his breast. he informed me that they were part of an ancient order who were dedicated to finding an even more ancient artifact. or had been, until we had sold them the broach. he told me that in seven days, after seven years of preperation, they would use it to bring about a golden age of peace and enlightenment on earth...

only they never did. the roadshow started up again a few months later. i guess the broach was a dud. isn't that always the way? some poor sap shows up with his great-grandmother's necklace clutched in his hand, dollar signs in his head, only to be politely informed that the string of beads is worth less than the gas he used to drive there. it makes for great viewing, i'm really glad that they started up again.

[QuirkyTemplate]

"I'm pretty tired by now." he said at last. There was a small creek that wove its way through the rolling hills. He flicked a cricket before it could launch itself hundreds of inches into the air.

"Hey, that's fine. We're all pretty tired." And he knew that was true.

"What did you think about Dark Tower seven?"

"Seven, the last one?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno. I was kinda dissapointed really."

"Why's that?"

He shruged in response and continued staring out into the trees. The sun was going down now, shadows building, running together and pooling out, grabbing reality like a ponderous and greedy kindergardner.

"Hey."

"hmm."

"Do you ever think about someone making a story about your life?"

"Uh ..."

"I don't mean the really cool stuff, just the day to day stuff that everyone thinks is just normal living?"

"Like this conversation?" he asked, arching a brow quizicially.

"Yeah, just like this ... like say for example someone wrote, 'Then he leaned back on his makeshift stool, mostly composed of fallen lumber and mold, and mused about writing a story of himself.'?"

"Psh ... you think they'd publish that?" his friend flicked a finished cigirette into the woods and began rummaging for another.

"Maybe."

He stuck the cigirette in his mouth and glanced at his friend. "First off, that sentence is shit."

"What?" he said incredulously.

"Yeah, it's garbage man. You can't say, 'mostly composed of' in a description. That's boring." He finally rediscovered his lighter and flicked a tiny flame into existence. "Plus, no one is going to want to read about a couple of dudes sitting in the woods."

"Well what if we tweaked it a little?" he asked. "Like, added really cool discriptions to things, gave ourselves dynamic names ... we could even pretend that we're in the woods doing something."

"No, that'd be lying. Then it's fiction all over again, might as well talk about Randland."

"It's not lying, it's spicing."

"It's lying dude. Here, hold this."

"kay." He waited for a couple minutes until his friend came back. "Here ... I wonder if they'd use spell check."

"You're still on that shit?" He sighed and sat down. "But yeah, they would."

[Anita Blake]

I sit here in the corner, ostensibly staring at the wall, staring at nothing, but in actuality, I am looking beyond myself.

There are things you can't talk about, you know, because people say the most irritating things. Some people feel that by stating the obvious they are being profound, or telling you something that should mean something because it's so obvious and they think you don't get it. Like:

"suicide won't solve anything" or:
"killing yourself is selfish"

No shit, sherlock. Sitting here, secret suicidal thoughts circling in my skull, I'll tell you, it's not about finding a solution to a problem, and it's not about helping out other people. Telling me that does not change the fact that I want to be dead.

Now, now, don't rush off to call the men in white to "save me from myself". I'm not going to kill myself. The thought of actually putting a blade to my veins, or swallowing pills, or blowing my brains out seems coarse, vulgar, and entirely too much work to me. I don't want to kill myself. I just want to be dead. Not so solve any problems, not to prove what a great person I am, but just as an easy way out of life. Cowardly desires? Sure. But accuse me of being a coward and you are only emphasizing the point that I don't in fact belong in your world. I just want... what anyone wants, I suppose. No more struggle. No more pain. Death seems so... peaceful. Quiet.

I sit here in this corner, and I watch you, I watch the world spin round it's axis, and I can't help but wonder "wouldn't it be OK to be dead?". Then I stare, and I think "isn't it OK to be alive?" No answers forthcoming. Carry on as you were.

[Amos]

Far beyond nightfall, well into the landscape of the night. Nightfall being the alchemy of shadow into a tapestry woven of thick, oily threads of time, and secrets dark and unlikely. Night becoming the sensation of walking blindly into eternity. Here I lie, and I do not seek truth. The soft duvet and softer pillows denying a harder reality. The softness of my mind as it seeks unconscious realms, where walls are walked through, and mirages the truer constructions.

I stare at the ceiling, eyes half-focused on a spindly dreamcatcher, hanging there in the paths of airborne shadows, like a steel trap placed deftly in sparse undergrowth: not covered by it's environment, but concealed all the same. It is camouflaged in darkness. By black leaves and blades of dusk. I fancy I will fall asleep, and wake from a dream of her, my inamorato, to find the essence of her caught in the dreamcatcher, like a butterfly in a spider's web.

[Amos]

There was a good man, who was in possession of a good hat. It was not his practise to wear the hat in public, but only to try it on in his living quarters, and pose in it before a mirror. For it seemed to him that it was such a good hat, that he wasn't up to the task of adorning it. At least once a week he would feel compelled to try it on, and invariably he would set it back on the shelf again, feeling somewhat dejected and heavy of spirit. It was as if, while he wore it, that hat weighed a thousand tons, and the effect it had on him was a lasting sense of a too heavy burden. For the first minute or so he would feel lifted and strong, but the longer he remained before the mirror, the more despondent his self-examination grew, which he put down to the superior qualities of his hat, contrasted with his own faults. The hat was supple, made of fine quality material, and shaped like the very essence of hat-ness. This was the Adonis of hats, the Heracles. Nothing could be done to improve this hat, nor could anything make it seem less perfect than it was. Conversely, the man was not very physically fine-featured. While he had many good traits, including generosity and a high regard for other's feelings and opinions, he also had a softness borne of leisure and moderate wealth, and a sallowness to his complexion from drinking too much and sleeping too little. When he had bought the hat, he had imagined it would transform him into something more like the hat itself, acting like a potion of invincibility. Yet all it had done was sneer derisively at him, and drive him into greater feelings of inadequacy, and a tendency to be anti-social, reclusive, and generally melancholic. He put the hat on more and more often, took it off more and more often. He abused the hat. He worshipped it. He denied it's existence by not wearing it, and confirmed it's power over him by trying to. He threatened to throw it out the window, but secretly feared it would mock him by soaring like an eagle across the sky. One day when he put on the hat, the empty space between them swallowed him completely, and he never emerged from it's depths.

[Amos]

Vic slammed the door open, and Yuvna rushed to catch up with her. "I wouldn't try to kill you, I like you!" she declared in her high girly voice, as the two set off into the blackness of the tunnels.

"On her eleventh birthday, the beautiful princess Yuvna Hey Vic howcome I don't have a last name?"

"Because you're only half a person. Grow a little taller and I'll think about giving you one."

"Hmpf.. The beautiful princess Yuvna was given a very special, magical-"

"-stepladder."

"Shut up, Vic! A magical piano. At first the princess was unsure of it, because she had never learned to play the piano."

"Being too sort to reach the keys."

"BUT it didn't matter. This piano didn't need to be learned. When princess Yuvna sat in front of it and put her hands on the keys, she instantly knew how to play it. Her fingers danced with a will of their own and the song she played was the song of her life."

"It was a very short song."

"She played for a very long time! The music filled the palace. All the lowly servants who heard it said they felt like the princess was with them, flying over their heads like an invisible angel or a fairy, and singing sweetly. Every note she played was about herself: all the things she'd seen and done and felt, and everybody who heard the music loved Yuvna even more than they already had. When it was over they rushed up to her bedroom to see her - but her room was empty, except for the piano."

"Then they looked down and saw her. She was just so short that they didn't notice her at first."

"She had disappeared. The magical piano had played her life away, turned her into music, into pure sound, and the song had only ended when she'd been completely transformed and there was no more princess left to make music out of."

There was a pause. Her tale had ended.

"Well?"

"Not bad," said Vic. "For a midget."

Yuvna poked her tongue out, and then smiled. Anything short of scorn from Vic was as good as outright praise.